Hey, baby....ciaaaaooo

Eddie Izzard (a brilliant comic) in his show Dress to Kill, does a fantastic bit about italians that totally sums up the Italian attitude. (NB: The transcript really doesn't do this bit justice. Ask me sometime, and I'll play it for you, or look for "Italians and Fascists" on his CD Dress to Kill, which you can buy on iTunes if you want it.) "The Italians invented fascism but they were never really fascists. Mussolini, 1922 'We are all now Fascist,' but most Italians are just great on mopeds with no helmets going (makes motorcycle noise)...just driving along going 'ciiiiaaaooo. hey....chiquita, ciaaaaooooo...hey, baby...' You know, and they just hang out, they're kinda cool, you know, and everyone looks fantastic and they don't have their glasses on the top of their head, they have them just above their eyes. And there's three different types of police and they all just hang out and go 'ciaaaaaaaaooo. ciao, bella. ciao.' There's a bank raid going on in the distance...'you just be quiet over there! eh, ciao.'" There is definitely a lot of hanging out around here, going "ciaaaaao." The pace of life is just very slow, and, as my friend Klara pointed out, every 45 minutes, faciamo una pausa (we take a break) for something. If it's not the official pausa (when, from 1 to 4 every afternoon, absolutely everything in the city shuts down), it's a break for coffee or conversation, or a cigarette--basically, you'd just better hope not to get anything done in less than an hour. The other thing you need to know about time in Italy is that everything--absolutely everything--takes due minuti (two minutes), but that two minutes means every length of time between 30 seconds and 30 minutes, and 30 minutes means at least an hour. You get very used to class starting 15 minutes late (and 15 minutes is not considered late. If you show up less than 10 minutes late for class, there won't even be anyone there to wait for the teacher with yet. Students will start to filter in at about 13 minutes after the hour, and the teacher will sweep in between 15 and 25 minutes late, generally wearing a scarf in some new and exciting way.) A five minute break in the middle of class means that you'll have quite enough time to go downstairs, have a coffee, chat with your classmates, read a newspaper, and still be the first one back to class when you return 35 minutes later. They've had a great many years to master the art of relaxation, and they've really truly done it at last. No more of this rushing around being Roman and conquering things--Italy is finally quite content to sit quietly and spend hours doing nothing. Maybe it's the next level in the evolution of a cultural identity. If so, all I just hope that we get there soon. This showing up late for class thing is awesome.

20 Things I Have Learned

So, right now I'm perched on my extremely tiny Italian bed in a pool of crumbs from the bag of water crackers I've just finished off (oh yes, those of us on student budgets eat the most elegant food in all of Italy. If you've never had a water cracker...well, they're not high in flavor. I mean, they're fine and all, but not exciting. can you tell I'm trying to finish all my food before I leave? Cause I can.) and basking in a flood of carbohydrates (mmmmm white flour. yeeeaaaahhh....). This moment about sums up my experience in Perugia this summer. It is simultaneously luxurious and exciting (I am, after all, three feet from the most gorgeous view in the world...check out ww.cupcakenation.net/blog and try some of the picture links in the last 2 entries if you doubt me) and extremely funky (eg, the crackers, the miniscule beds, and the very very student atmosphere). To make this moment completely Perugian, all you'd need to add would be some Italian TV. I have watched so much Italian TV this month, you have no idea. They really like the dubbed american shows and movies here, which are actually pretty good for practicing your Italian with. In the morning, they show Beverly Hills 90210, followed by Baywatch. In the afternoon, it's What I Like ABout You, Quantum Leap, and generally, an English movie dubbed into Italian. A few days ago, it was a movie about a mormon missionary, which was incidentally one of the first appearances of Anne Hathaway (as the missionary's girlfriend). The movie was called The Other Side of Heaven. It's the true story of a missionary in the 1940's who gets sent to Tonga, an island in the Pacific. He spends 2.5 years there, and then goes home to marry Anne Hathaway and eventually comes back to the islands. My Italian was up to almost all of it, except for the technical vocabulary for "flesh eating insect." I had to look that up. And so, without further ado, I present: 20 Things I Have Learned from The Other Side of Heaven: 1. Tonga is a group of islands in the Pacific. 2. The words for "toilet" and "missionary" must be similar in the language they speak in Tonga 3. If you do nothing but compare the English and Tongan books of Mormon for 4 days, you will become suddenly fluent in spoken idiomatic Tongan. 4. If you sleep with your feet [un]covered in Tonga, something involving an insect will happen that will leave you with big bloody gashes that refuse to heal on the soles of both feet. 5. This is not a sign from god. 6. If you put them in the sun, they will get better. 7. You will not die. 8. If you give a man a pearl, he will die of a mysterious disease. 9. And then there will be a hurricane. 10. But you will not die. 11. If you sail from one island to another on a very small boat, you will be inevitably lost at sea in huge waves. 12. You will, despite not being in sight of any islands, be able to swim to one. 13. You will not die. 14. If you contract a mysterious disease, a boat will come. 15. And you will not die. 16. Your girlfriend will wait for you for 3 years. 17. In which time she will not age. 18. And then you will get married and move to a gorgeous pacific island and run on the beach. 19. And she will still not have aged. 20. At all. In all seriousness, though, this was actually a pretty darn good movie. I mean, I was interested at least most of the time. It might not be as interesting in English though, since concentrating on the language can even make some very boring things, like Laguna Beach (which they show here, dubbed, on MTV), interesting.

Redesign!

Cupcakenation is all redone! Enjoy...

Free Internet!

I have truly found the land of milk and honey. The apartment of my new best friend, Klara, who happens also to go to Stanford, has free wireless internet. This is the miracle to end all miracles. It's free! And I can use it on my own computer! And did I tell you about the free?!? My only restraint is the battery life of my laptop since I foolishly did not bring my charger. This is no object. I am in raptures. I am approaching my last week here, and as such, I am planning to fill it with present buying. This is both delightful and terrifying, as I like getting people things, but kind of hate shopping. Last night, we all went to the outdoor movie theater to see Pride and Prejudice. It was amazingly cool. The movie was mediocre, but it was shown in an awesome old Roman theater, and there were stars overhead and fireflies flashing everywhere. WE all sat on the steps of the theater and drank beer and made fun of Keira Knightly. August is almost over, and with it, my stay here in Perugia. I'm both delighted and sad to be leaving. I'll be glad to be heading back to the real world and back to school and my friends, but I'll be sad to be leaving nights like last night and the friends I've made here. (Or rather, most of them. One of them actually goes to Stanford, so I'll be able to see her whenever I want. :-) ) In short, I'm conflicted, but glad to be headed home. My computer is complaining about its battery, so goodnight for now. Ciao, ragazzi. Buona Notte.